In a June 20, 2012, photo ten-year-old Jacob Mosbacher guides a tractor through a bean field on his grandparents' property near Fults, Ill. Agriculture organizations and federal lawmakers from farm states succeeded in convincing the U.S. Labor Department to drop proposals limiting farm work by children such as Jacob, whose parents say such questions of safety involving kids should be left to parents. (AP Photo/Jim Suhr)

A proposed federal labor rule abandoned in April that would have added prohibitions for children working in agriculture continues to be a source of debate among farmers and their organizations, agency officials and advocates for enhanced safety regulations.

The proposal withdrawn in April would have prevented children 15 and younger from doing some tasks while working with animals and would not allow them to handle some other hazardous jobs including pesticide handling and timber operations. Workers 16 and younger would have also been prohibited from operating power-driven equipment except under some circumstances. Children 17 and younger would have also been prohibited from working in places such as grain elevators, silos, stockyards and feed lots.

According to the Department of Labor, the fatality rate for children working in agriculture is four times higher than that of other young workers in all other industries combined, with agricultural work accounting for 73 percent of the 130 deaths of children 15 and younger on the job between 2003 and 2010.

"I have not seen any youth working in other industries that are at higher risk," said John Myers, chief of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health Administration's surveillance and field investigations branch. "(Farming) may be an accepted risk for the parent, but the question is to put that risk on the child. That's the question that's not being adequately addressed.

"If society says you have to be 16 to operate a car, I don't see how you can say it's any less sound advice that you have to be 16 to operate farm equipment," Myers said. "I suspect this will not be addressed again, and I suspect we will continue to have youths dying on farms each year in situations that were perfectly preventable."

View full sizeIn this June 20, 2012, photo ten-year-old Jacob Mosbacher guides a tractor through a bean field on his grandparents' property near Fults, Ill. Agriculture organizations and federal lawmakers from farm states succeeded last spring in convincing the U.S. Labor Department to drop proposals limiting farm work by children such as Jacob, whose parents say such questions of safety involving kids should be left to parents. (AP Photo/Jim Suhr)

The Labor Department dropped its pursuit of planned revisions to rules -- including proposing a new interpretation of the "parental exemption" that allows children of any age to perform all jobs on family-owned farms -- in response to concerns of unintended effects. The agency has said that the rule revisions will not be brought up again under the Obama administration.

"The Department of Labor’s decision to abandon efforts to revise these regulations is a direct result of farm families speaking through organizations like the Alabama Farmers Federation and the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF)," Walker said in an ALFA release. "Congress also delivered a clear message to the agency by introducing bills in both chambers and sending letters in opposition to the proposed rule."

"Training the next generation of farmers and ranchers is necessary to ensuring a stable food supply for our nation," Rehberg wrote. "If we do not encourage participation in agriculture from an early age, we will have fewer and fewer young people staying to work on farms and ranches. "

Dennis Mosbacher, a farmer in Fults, Ill., who gets help with work from his 10-year-old son Jacob, told AP reporter Jim Suhr that all of the risks in farming could not be prevented by the proposed rules.

"You can't make a rule to stop every accident," Mosbacher said. "There's always a risk in life, no matter what you do."

What do you think? Would such regulations be overly burdensome on family farms? Or does the death rate for young workers merit tougher policies? Add your thoughts in the comments section below.